`a war of aggression . .
. is not only an international crime; it is the supreme
international crime differing only from other war crimes in
that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the
whole.`

`Aggression is the use of armed force by a state against the
sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence
of another state, or in any other manner inconsistent with
the Charter of the United Nations`

In solidarity with the people of Iraq struggling under
foreign occupation.

March 4thThe U.S. military plans to
continue paying Iraqi newspapers to publish articles
favorable to the United States after an inquiry found no
fault with the controversial practice, the top U.S. general
in Iraq said Friday. Army Gen. George W. Casey said the
internal review had concluded that the U.S. military was not
violating U.S. law or Pentagon guidelines with the
information operations campaign, in which U.S. troops and a
private contractor write pro-American articles and pay to
have them planted without attribution in Iraqi media.

March 5thTens of thousands of people have been held arbitrarily
in Iraq since the start of the US invasion in March 2003,
creating a situation that is ripe for abuse, Amnesty
International states in their new report `Beyond
Abu Ghraib: Detention and Torture in Iraq`.
Most of those held were neither charged nor faced trial and
had no right to challenge their detention. Nearly 3 years
after the US forces invaded Iraq `the human rights situation
in the country remains dire,` the report says. `The
deployment of US-led forces in Iraq and the armed response
that is engendered has resulted in thousands of deaths of
civilians and widespread abuses amid the ongoing conflict.`

March 6thTwo girls under
the age of four died today when a car bomb exploded in a
bustling market in Baquba northeast of Baghdad, killing six
people and wounding 20. The blast destroyed food stalls and
shops in the market, which was busy with women and children.
Police said that most of the casualties were children.

March 7thThe US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said
that the 2003 invasion of Iraq that toppled dictator Saddam
Hussein opened a 'Pandora's box' of ethnic and sectarian
strife that has created the threat of civil war.

March 8thHospital and police sources said they received 5
bodies shot dead by U.S. forces in Mosul. No details of the
incident were available.

March 9thThe US State Department`s own `Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices`
(2005) says that killings and torture by the Iraqi
government and its agents increased in 2005. The report
describes `a climate of extreme violence in which people
were killed for political and other reasons`. The worst
abuses against prisoners were carried out by police,
including beatings and electric shock, but the military was
also a violator. The document also
mentions `suspension by the arms or legs, as well as the
reported use of electric drills and cords`. However, the
report fails to mention the US treatment of detainees in
Iraq, Afghanistan or Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

March 10thGunmen have killed some 182 Iraqi university
professors and academics since the U.S. invasion . The
Association of University Lecturers in Iraq said that the
killings constituted a war crime. Haifa Zangana,
the Iraqi-born novelist and former prisoner of Saddam`s
regime, has alleged that many of those killed had publicly
opposed the occupation and that ` these killings are
politically motivated…... For the occupation`s aims to be
fulfilled, independent minds have to be eradicated…we are
witnessing a deliberate attempt to destroy intellectual life
in Iraq.`

********************************

Iran War Alert

On Sunday March 5th
the US Ambassador to the UN told the American Israeli Public
Affairs Committee, a pro Israeli US Lobbying Group that Iran
faced `painful consequences` if it failed to cease sensitive
nuclear activities and that the US would `use all tools at
its disposal` to thwart Iran`s nuclear program. He warned
also that `The longer we wait to confront the threat Iran
poses, the harder and more intractable it will become to
solve`. Mr Bolton was also reported
to have told the visiting MP`s of the parliamentary foreign
affairs committee in Washington that `They must know
everything is on the table and they must understand what
that means. We can hit different points along the line. You
only have to take out one part of their nuclear operation to
take the whole thing down`. Furthermore, the US vice
president Dick Cheney saidtoAIPAC
that `For our part, the United States is keeping all options
on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the
regime`. In the meantime, the IAEA
head Mohammad ElBaradei
stated that `What we need at this stage is cool headed
approaches. We need people to lower the rhetoric.`, that `We
need a settlement that assures Iran its peaceful right to
nuclear energy` and that
`the Agency has not seen indications of diversion of nuclear
material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive
devices`.

********************************

Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq
since invasion*:

*This
estimate is only of media reported deaths. A peer
reviewed epidemiological survey (Roberts
et al., The Lancet, Vol 364 Issue 9448 pp 1857 1864)
estimated that in the 18 months following the invasion 100,
000 excess deaths or more have occurred. Violence accounted
for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition
forces accounted for most violent deaths. Criticisms of IBC
methodology can be found at medialens